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draconic month (astronomy)
...5 seconds), only 7 seconds shorter than the sidereal month, is the time between passages of the Moon through the same celestial longitude. The draconic, or nodical, month of 27.212220 days (i.e., 27 days 5 hours 5 minutes 35.8 seconds) is the time between the Moon’s passages through the same node, or intersection of its orbit ...
Dracontius, Blossius Aemilius (Latin poet)
the foremost Christian Latin poet of Africa. He lived at the time of the literary revival that took place under Vandal rule in the latter part of the 5th century....
Dracula (film by Browning)
...but also restored the dimension of literary dialogue present in so many of the original sources. Appropriately, Universal Pictures’ three great horror classics—Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), and Karl Freund’s The Mummy (1932)—were all early soun...
Dracula (novel by Stoker)
Complete prints survive of Murnau’s first major work, Nosferatu (1922), which is regarded by many as the most effective screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Eschewing psychological overtones, Murnau treated the subject as pure fantasy and, with the aid of noted cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, produced appropriately macabre v...
Dracula, Count (fictional character)
...the Argeș River valley, by Vlad III (Vlad Țepeș, or Vlad the Impaler), a prince known for executing his enemies by impalement, who may have been the prototype for Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel (1897). The fortress has a stairway of some 1,400 steps. An arboretum, a forestry experimental station, and a roe......
Dracula: The Un-Dead (work by Stoker and Holt)
...Dracula. The immensely popular novel enjoyed equal success in several versions as a play and as a film. In 2009 Dacre Stoker (great grandnephew of the author) and Ian Holt produced Dracula: The Un-Dead, a sequel that is based on the novelist’s own notes and excisions from the original. The sequel, which shuns the epistolary style of the first ......
dracunculiasis (pathology)
...America. A variety of other mammals are also parasitized by guinea worms. The disease caused by the worm is called dracunculiasis....
Dracunculus medinensis (invertebrate)
member of the phylum Nematoda. The guinea worm, a common parasite of humans in tropical regions of Asia and Africa, has also been introduced into the West Indies and tropical South America. A variety of other mammals are also parasitized by guinea worms...
draft (military service)
compulsory enrollment for service in a country’s armed forces. It has existed at least from the time of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (27th century bce), but there have been few instances—ancient or modern—of universal conscription (calling all those physically capable between certain ages). The usual form—even during ...
draft (banking)
short-term negotiable financial instrument consisting of an order in writing addressed by one person (the seller of goods) to another (the buyer) requiring the latter to pay on demand (a sight draft) or at a fixed or determinable future time (a time draft) a certain sum of money to a specified person or to the bearer of the bill....
draft (ship design)
...The beam is the greatest breadth of the ship. The depth is measured at the middle of the length, from the top of the keel to the top of the deck beam at the side of the uppermost continuous deck. Draft is measured from the keel to the waterline, while freeboard is measured from the waterline to the deck edge....
draft animal
any domesticated animal used in drawing heavy loads. Draft animals were in common use in Mesopotamia before 3000 bc for farm work and for pulling wheeled vehicles. Their use spread to the rest of the world over the following 2,500 years. While cattle, usually in teams, have been used most often as ...
draft horse (mammal)
...the horse, the water mill, and the windmill. Europeans began to breed both the specialized warhorse, adding stirrups to provide the mounted warrior a better seat and greater striking force, and the draft horse, now shod with iron horseshoes that protected the hooves from the damp clay soils of northern Europe. The draft horse was faster and more efficient than the ox, the traditional beast of.....
Draft Plan (Serbian history)
In 1844 he wrote a memorandum entitled Nac̆ertanije (“Draft Plan”). This document, with remarkable prescience, anticipated the decline of the Ottoman and Habsburg (Austrian) empires and argued that Serbia would be well-placed to fill the resulting political vacuum. He posited that the most likely line of territorial expansion would lie through......
Draft Riot of 1863 (United States history)
major four-day eruption of violence in New York City resulting from deep worker discontent with the inequities of conscription during the U.S. Civil War. Although labouring people in general supported the Northern war effort, they had no voice in Republican policy and occasionally deserted from the army or...
draft script (Chinese calligraphy)
in Chinese calligraphy, a cursive variant of the standard Chinese scripts lishu and kaishu and their semicursive derivative xingshu. The script developed during the ...
Draft Treaty (Europe [1923-24])
...a position of leadership in security matters, with the support of French and British proponents of the League such as Lord Robert Cecil, whose Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance came under discussion in 1923. Beneš rightly criticized the Draft Treaty for requiring unanimity on the League Council to declare sanctions against an......
Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance (Europe [1923-24])
...a position of leadership in security matters, with the support of French and British proponents of the League such as Lord Robert Cecil, whose Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance came under discussion in 1923. Beneš rightly criticized the Draft Treaty for requiring unanimity on the League Council to declare sanctions against an......
drafting (yarn manufacturing)
in yarn manufacture, process of attenuating the loose assemblage of fibres called sliver by passing it through a series of rollers, thus straightening the individual fibres and making them more parallel. Each pair of rollers spins faster than the previous one. ...
drafting (graphics)
graphical representation of structures, machines, and their component parts that communicates the engineering intent of a technical design to the craftsman or worker who makes the product....
drafting machine (instrument)
...invented to facilitate the performance of the manual tasks. Most widely known are the T square, triangle, protractor, and compass; the parallel straightedge is an alternative to the T square. The drafting machine, introduced about 1930, allows a straightedge to be moved while maintaining any desired angle between it and the edge of the drawing board. Combining the functions of the T square,......
drag (agriculture)
...harrow has two to four gangs in tandem, and the offset has two to three gangs in tandem on one side of the tractor, used particularly under low-hanging fruit trees. The horse-drawn or tractor-drawn spike-tooth harrow, or drag, developed in the early 19th century, has sections 1 to 1.5 m (3 to 5 feet) wide with long spike teeth mounted nearly vertically on horizontal bars. It is used chiefly for...
drag (fluid mechanics)
Force exerted by a fluid stream on any obstacle in its path or felt by an object moving through a fluid. Its magnitude and how it may be reduced are important to designers of moving vehicles, ships, suspension bridges, cooling towers, and other structures. Drag forces are conventionally described by a drag coefficient, defin...
drag coefficient (fluid mechanics)
...area A (which is πぱいD2/4 for a sphere) but not necessarily exactly equal to this. It is conventional to describe drag forces in terms of a dimensionless quantity called the drag coefficient; this is defined, irrespective of the shape of the body, as the ratio [FD/(ρろーv02/2)A] and is denoted by C...
drag dredge (excavating device)
Two means of bringing nodules to the surface on a commercial scale seem to have merit. These are the deep-sea drag dredge and the deep-sea hydraulic dredge. The deep-sea drag dredge would be designed to skim only a thin layer of material from the seafloor until its bucket is filled with nodules. The dredge would then be retrieved, the bucket drawn up over a track on the back of the dredging......
drag force (fluid mechanics)
Force exerted by a fluid stream on any obstacle in its path or felt by an object moving through a fluid. Its magnitude and how it may be reduced are important to designers of moving vehicles, ships, suspension bridges, cooling towers, and other structures. Drag forces are conventionally described by a drag coefficient, defin...
drag queen (cross-dressing)
A small segment of the homosexual male population does engage in transvestism; these men are referred to as “drag queens” by other homosexuals, and the practice of cross-dressing is called being “in drag.” Unlike the male transsexual who wants to pass in society as a normal woman, the “drag queen” often wears flamboyant outfits in a conscious caricature of...
drag racing (motor sport)
form of motor racing that originated in the United States and in which two contestants race from a standing start side by side on a drag strip—a flat, straight course, most commonly 14 mile (0.4 km) long. Both e...
drag rope (balloon part)
Most of the features of the classic free balloon were included in Charles’s first machine. Important later additions were the rip panel, first used on April 27, 1839, by the American aeronaut John Wise, and the drag rope, invented about 1830 by the English aeronaut Charles Green. A rip panel is an elongated section of the balloon that i...
drag seine (net)
Seine nets are often employed in beach seining, where fish shoals are near beaches. Large beach-seining operations for sardinelike fishes and other species are carried on in the Indian Ocean. The importance of this method has decreased as pollution has cut the available stocks of fish in this region and as manpower costs have risen: not all fishing methods lend themselves to mechanization. More......
drag tachometer (instrument)
Electrical tachometers are of several types. The eddy-current, or drag, type is widely used in automobile speedometers; a magnet rotated with the shaft being measured produces eddy currents that are proportional to angular speed. Electric-generator tachometers work by generating either an alternating or a direct current. The stroboscope, an......
drag-gshed (Tibetan Buddhist deity)
in Tibetan Buddhism, any one of a group of eight divinities who, though benevolent, are represented as hideous and ferocious in order to instill terror in evil spirits....
Drăgăşani, Battle of (Balkan history)
(June 19, 1821), military engagement in which the Ottoman Turks defeated the forces of the Greek revolutionary society Philikí Etaireía and ended the first insurrection of the Greek War of Independence. Intending to overthrow Ottoman rule in the Balkans and to establish an independent Greek state, Philikí Etaireía sent the Sacred Ba...
Dragging-Canoe (Cherokee chieftain)
Settlement was rapid during the 1770s, though the prophecies of a Cherokee chieftain, Dragging-Canoe, that Boone and other white settlers would find Kentucky “a dark and bloody land” were in large part fulfilled. During the American Revolution (1775–83), British officers antagonized the native peoples, who responded most notably by mounting raids on Boonesborough in 1777 and.....
dragline (engineering)
...to the bottom at a slant, the empty buckets descend along the underside to the bottom, where they dig into the mud; the loaded buckets return along the ladder’s upper side and dump at the top. The scraper dredge, also called a dragline, handles material with a scoop suspended from a swinging boom. The scoop is drawn forward by a line attached to the front, while a second line attached to...
Dragnet (American television program)
...on the Los Angeles police force (1949–53). He then became a freelance television writer and contributed scripts through 1962 to several network programs, including Dragnet, Highway Patrol, Dr. Kildare, and Have Gun—Will Travel. In 1964 he began trying to sell the idea of Star Trek to......
Drago Doctrine (international relations)
The Calvo Doctrine was essentially restated by the Drago Doctrine, articulated by the Argentine foreign minister Luis María Drago in 1902. Venezuela then was indebted to Great Britain, Germany, and Italy, which threatened armed intervention to collect. Drago advised the United......
Drago, Luis María (Argentine statesman)
statesman and author of the Drago Doctrine, which opposed the forcible collection of debts through military intervention in any South American republic....
dragoman (Ottoman official)
official interpreter in countries where Arabic, Turkish, and Persian are spoken. Originally the term applied to any intermediary between Europeans and Middle Easterners, whether as a hotel tout or as a traveller’s guide, but there developed the official dragomans of foreign ministries and embassies, whose functions at one time included ...
Dragomir (Bohemian ruler)
...whom she urged to take over the government and to maintain Christianity. Wenceslas’ ascension to the throne about 921 worsened Ludmila’s relations with the opposing party, particularly with Drahomíra, who, as regent, favoured the pagans. An ensuing feud between Ludmila and Drahomíra ended when agents entered Tetin Castle and strangled Ludmila, a deed that has traditi...
Dragomirna Monastery (monastery, Romania)
...of Dorohoi. Mihail Eminescu (1850–89), the poet, was born in Ipoteşti village and a museum there commemorates his life. The Dragomirna Monastery, located near Itcani village, was completed in 1609 by Anastase Crimca, metropolitan of Moldavia and a painter of miniatures. The monastery, fortified in 1627 by Prince Miron......
dragon (mythological creature)
legendary monster usually conceived as a huge, bat-winged, fire-breathing, scaly lizard or snake with a barbed tail. The belief in these creatures apparently arose without the slightest knowledge on the part of the ancients of the gigantic, prehistoric, dragon-like reptiles. In Greece the word drakōn, from which the English word was derived, was used originally for any large serpent...
Dragon Beard Ditch (play by Lao She)
...were also active, introducing more proletarian themes into their works, some of which incorporated music. By this time, Lao She had begun writing plays, such as Lung-hsü kou (1951; Dragon Beard Ditch), which earned him the prestigious title of People’s Artist. Another very popular play, Pai-mao nü (1953; White-Haired Girl) by Ho Ching-chih, was t...
Dragon Boat festival (Chinese festival)
...poetry and observing the shamanistic folk rites and legends that greatly influenced his works. He eventually drowned himself in despair in the Miluo River, a tributary of the Yangtze. The famous Dragon Boat Festival, held on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar year, originated as a search for the poet’s body....
Dragón, Bocas del (channel, Caribbean Sea)
channel of the southeastern Caribbean Sea, between Point Peñas (the eastern end of the Paria Peninsula in northeastern Venezuela) and the northwestern extremity of the island of Trinidad. The channel, about 12 miles (20 km) wide, is one of two separating Trinidad from mainland South America; the other is the Serpent’s Mouth, off the island...
Dragon Kings (Chinese mythology)
...Spiritual Dragon (Shenlong), who controls the rain and winds. In popular belief only the latter two were significant; they were transformed into the Dragon Kings (Longwang), gods who lived in the four oceans, delivered rain, and protected seafarers....
Dragon Lady, The (empress dowager of China)
consort of the Xianfeng emperor (reigned 1850–61), mother of the Tongzhi emperor (reigned 1861–75), adoptive mother of the Guangxu emperor (reigned 1875–1908), and a towering presence over the Chinese empire for almost half a century. Ruling through a clique of conservative, corrupt officials and maintaining authority ov...
Dragon Motif (work by Flannagan)
...Flannagan’s most effective poetic theme; it informed his major works—e.g., Triumph of the Egg (1937 and 1941) and perhaps even the tumid Dragon Motif (1933). The spirit of the inert material seems to emerge from these works and mingle with the impressions made by the carver. Shortly before he committed suicide, Flannagan ...
Dragon of Bosnia (Bosnian leader)
...by local Janissaries in Bosnia. The Ottoman authorities mounted punitive campaigns against the Janissaries’ stronghold, Sarajevo, in 1827 and 1828. In 1831 a charismatic young kapetan called Husein seized power in Bosnia, imprisoning the vizier in Travnik. With an army of 25,000 men, Husein then marched into Kosovo to negotiate with the Ottoman ......
Dragon of Hidden Treasure (Chinese mythology)
...Celestial Dragon (Tianlong), who guards the heavenly dwellings of the gods; the Dragon of Hidden Treasure (Fuzanglong); the Earth Dragon (Dilong), who controls the waterways; and the Spiritual Dragon (Shenlong), who controls the rain and winds. In......
dragon robe (Chinese court dress)
Qifu, or “dragon robes” (longpao) as they were usually called, were designed for regular court wear by men and women of imperial, noble, and official rank. The qifu was a straight, kimono-sleeved robe with a closely fitted neckband that continued across the breast.....
dragon rug (carpet)
any of the most numerous group of the Kuba carpets and a great favourite among rug fanciers because of striking design and colouring. The basic pattern—great, irregular, jagged bands that form an ogee lattice—is closely related to that of the vase carpets of Kermān, upon which they were probably based....
dragon ship
type of sail-and-oar vessel that predominated in northern European waters for more than 1,500 years and played an important role in history. Ranging from 45 to 75 feet (14 to 23 metres) in length, clinker-built (with overlapped planks), and carrying a single square sail, the longship was exceptionally sturdy in heavy seas. I...
dragon tree (plant)
...Dracaena sanderiana, with white-edged leaves, and D. fragrans, with yellow leaf edges or white stripes, are commonly cultivated as houseplants. The dragon tree (D. draco) of the Canary Islands, an ornamental tree with orange fruit, can grow 18 m (60 feet) tall and 6 m wide. The trunk......
dragon worm (invertebrate)
member of the phylum Nematoda. The guinea worm, a common parasite of humans in tropical regions of Asia and Africa, has also been introduced into the West Indies and tropical South America. A variety of other mammals are also parasitized by guinea worms...
dragonet (fish)
any of about 40 species of marine fishes constituting the family Callionymidae (order Perciformes), found in warm temperate or tropical areas, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. Dragonets characteristically have large and elongated fins, large, flattened heads, and small gills that are mere rounded openings. Dragonets are scaleless. The males may be brightly coloured once sexually mature, in...
Dragonetti, Domenico (Italian musician)
...late 15th or early 16th century and were in common use by the 18th century. Ludwig van Beethoven and later composers gave the bass increased importance in the symphony orchestra. Beethoven’s friend Domenico Dragonetti and the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, both skilled bassists, composed concerti for the instrument....
dragonfish (fish)
any of about five species of small marine fishes comprising the family Pegasidae and the order Pegasiformes. Dragonfish are found in warm Indo-Pacific waters. They are small (to about 16 centimetres [6 12 inches] long), elongated fish encased in bony rings of armour. The armour is fused on the head and body but not on the tail, which is thus flexible. The ...
dragonfly (insect)
any of a group of aerial, predatory insects most commonly found near freshwater habitats throughout most of the world. Damselflies (suborder Zygoptera) are sometimes also called dragonflies in that both are odonates (order Odonata). The 2,500 dragonfly species (Anisoptera) are characterized by long bodies with two narrow pairs of intricately veined, membranous...
dragonhead (plant)
either of two genera of plants, Dracocephalum and Physostegia, both belonging to the mint family (Lamiaceae), order Lamiales. The about 45 species of Dracocephalum, all native in temperate Eurasia except for one in North America, h...
dragonnades (French history)
Louvois’s successful career was tarnished by two acts: the dragonnades leading up to the revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, which had granted French Protestants certain liberties, and the destruction of the Palatinate. Historians have accused Louvois of originating the dragonnades, the quartering of troops in Protestant households with the intention of forcing conversion to ......
dragonroot (herb)
The green dragon, or dragonroot (A. dracontium), with leaves up to 25 cm in length on petioles up to 90 cm (35 inches) long, has an 8-centimetre-long greenish spathe, with an erect hood, surrounding a spadix that extends beyond the spathe by several times its length....
dragon’s blood (resin)
red resin obtained from the fruit of several palms of the genus Daemonorops and used in colouring varnishes and lacquers. Once valued as a medicine in Europe because of its astringent properties, dragon’s blood now is used as a varnish for violins and in photoengraving for preventing undercutting of the printing surface during et...
Dragons Mouths (channel, Caribbean Sea)
channel of the southeastern Caribbean Sea, between Point Peñas (the eastern end of the Paria Peninsula in northeastern Venezuela) and the northwestern extremity of the island of Trinidad. The channel, about 12 miles (20 km) wide, is one of two separating Trinidad from mainland South America; the other is the Serpent’s Mouth, off the island...
Dragon’s Mouths (channel, Caribbean Sea)
channel of the southeastern Caribbean Sea, between Point Peñas (the eastern end of the Paria Peninsula in northeastern Venezuela) and the northwestern extremity of the island of Trinidad. The channel, about 12 miles (20 km) wide, is one of two separating Trinidad from mainland South America; the other is the Serpent’s Mouth, off the island...
dragon’s tongue (plant)
...America from Canada to Mexico and in Europe and Japan. C. maculata, sometimes called striped pipsissewa, rheumatism root, dragon’s tongue, and spotted wintergreen, occurs in North America from Canada to the southern United States. The name pipsissewa d...
dragon’s-mouth (plant)
(Arethusa bulbosa), one of two plant species of the orchid genus Arethusa, family Orchidaceae. Dragon’s-mouth is found only in North American bogs; the other species exists only in marshy areas of Japan....
dragoon (soldier)
in late 16th-century Europe, a mounted soldier who fought as a light cavalryman on attack and as a dismounted infantryman on defense. The terms derived from his weapon, a species of carbine or short musket called the dragoon. Dragoons were organized not in squadrons but in companies, and their officers and noncommissioned officers bore infantry titles. From th...
Dragoon, Operation (Europe-United States [1944])
...eastward from Brittany developed, the British and Americans began a strong advance west of Caen toward Falaise. On August 16, the day after a Franco-American force had landed on the Riviera (Operation Dragoon), Hitler at last recognized the inevitable and gave permission for a withdrawal from Normandy. The only route of escape lay through a gap between the converging American and British......
Drahomanov, Mikhail (Ukrainian writer)
...and had a population of several million Ukrainians, not only the language but also political activity flourished. There the great Ukrainian historian Mikhail Hrushevsky and the socialist writer Mikhail Drahomanov published their works; Ukrainian political literature was smuggled across the border. In the 1890s small illegal groups of......
Drahomanov, Mykhaylo (Ukrainian writer)
...and had a population of several million Ukrainians, not only the language but also political activity flourished. There the great Ukrainian historian Mikhail Hrushevsky and the socialist writer Mikhail Drahomanov published their works; Ukrainian political literature was smuggled across the border. In the 1890s small illegal groups of......
Drahomíra (Bohemian ruler)
...whom she urged to take over the government and to maintain Christianity. Wenceslas’ ascension to the throne about 921 worsened Ludmila’s relations with the opposing party, particularly with Drahomíra, who, as regent, favoured the pagans. An ensuing feud between Ludmila and Drahomíra ended when agents entered Tetin Castle and strangled Ludmila, a deed that has traditi...
Drahoňovský, Josef (Czech artist)
After World War I the outstanding figure in Czech glass art was Josef Drahoňovský, who was professor at the Prague School of Industrial Art. He was essentially a sculptor, and most of his glass designs were for sumptuously engraved glass of a monumental quality. His colleague in Prague, Jaroslav Horejc, designed for engraved work of a broadly similar character, some of it for the......
drain (electronics)
A perspective view of a MESFET is given in Figure 7A. It consists of a conductive channel with two ohmic contacts, one acting as the source and the other as the drain. The conductive channel is formed in a thin n-type layer supported by a high-resistivity semi-insulating (nonconducting) substrate. When a positive voltage is applied to the drain with respect to the source, electrons flow......
drain current (electronics)
A typical current-voltage characteristic of a MESFET is shown in Figure 7B, where the drain current ID is plotted against the drain voltage VD for various gate voltages. For a given gate voltage (e.g., VG = 0), the drain current initially increases linearly with drain voltage, indicating that the conductive......
drain tile (ceramics)
Drain tile performs a service that ensures a higher yield in farm production of food throughout the world. Many farming areas are plagued with too much water at the wrong times. Drain tile reduces the water level during these times, thereby allowing the root growth of plants to penetrate deeper into the soil, which, in turn, permits them......
drain voltage (electronics)
A typical current-voltage characteristic of a MESFET is shown in Figure 7B, where the drain current ID is plotted against the drain voltage VD for various gate voltages. For a given gate voltage (e.g., VG = 0), the drain current initially increases linearly with drain voltage, indicating that the conductive......
drainage (agriculture)
in agriculture, the artificial removal of water from land; drainage is employed in the reclamation of wetlands, in the prevention of erosion, and as a concomitant of irrigation in the agriculture of arid regions....
drainage basin (geology)
area from which all precipitation flows to a single stream or set of streams. For example, the total area drained by the Mississippi River constitutes its drainage basin, whereas that part of the Mississippi River drained by the Ohio River...
drainage composition, Horton’s laws of (hydrology)
...takes place. Ponding cannot occur until the surface soil layers become saturated. It is now widely recognized that surface saturation can occur because of two quite distinct mechanisms—namely, Horton overland flow and Dunne overland flow....
drainage density (hydrology)
Valley morphology can be described in numerous ways. A useful measure is drainage density Dd, which relates the length of valleys (or streams) L to the area A in which they occur:...
drainage net (hydrology)
Distinctive patterns are acquired by stream networks in consequence of adjustment to geologic structure. In the early history of a network, and also when erosion is reactivated by earth movement or a fall in sea level, downcutting by trunk streams and extension of tributaries are most rapid on weak rocks, especially if these are......
drainage pattern (hydrology)
Distinctive patterns are acquired by stream networks in consequence of adjustment to geologic structure. In the early history of a network, and also when erosion is reactivated by earth movement or a fall in sea level, downcutting by trunk streams and extension of tributaries are most rapid on weak rocks, especially if these are......
drainage system (sewage)
Large airports are actually urban complexes in which high-population activity centres are closely associated with very extensive paved areas. Typically a large airport can, on a daily basis, handle more than 100,000 passengers and support a working population of more than 50,000 employees. The sewage system of such an airport must cope with large daily flows of sanitary sewage effluent and, in......
Drais de Sauerbrun, Karl von (German inventor)
The first two-wheeled rider-propelled machine for which there is indisputable evidence was the draisienne, invented by Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun of Germany. In 1817 he rode it for 14 km (9 miles), and the following year he exhibited it in Paris. Although von Drais called his device a Laufmaschine......
draisienne (bicycle)
The first two-wheeled rider-propelled machine for which there is indisputable evidence was the draisienne, invented by Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun of Germany. In 1817 he rode it for 14 km (9 miles), and the following year he exhibited it in Paris. Although von Drais called his device a Laufmaschine......
drake (insect)
any member of a group of insects known for their extremely short life spans and emergence in large numbers in the summer months. Other common names for the winged stages are shadfly, sandfly, dayfly, fishfly, and drake. The aquatic immature stage, called a nymph or naiad, is widely distributed in freshwater, although a few s...
Drake, Alfred (American actor)
American actor who breathed new life into musical theatre as the star of Broadway’s Oklahoma! (1943), which featured his rich baritone voice in renditions of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” “People Will Say We’re in Love,” and “The Surrey with the Fri...
Drake, Bill (American radio programmer)
...of its time. After years of “personality” radio—dominated by deejay chatter and replete with long jingles—it ushered in the mainstreaming of Top 40 radio. Its designer, Bill Drake, a Georgia-born deejay, liked to keep things simple. As a budding programming consultant, he proved himself at three California stations (in Fresno, Stockton, and San Diego), succeeding......
Drake, Charlie (British comedian and actor)
British comedian and actor (b. June 19, 1925, Elephant and Castle, London, Eng.—d. Dec. 23, 2006, Twickenham, Middlesex, Eng.), delighted audiences with his slapstick comic antics in stage variety shows and on television for more than 50 years, often playing a downtrodden “everyman,” who failed at everything he tried. The diminutive 1.56-m (5-ft 112...
Drake, Edwin Laurentine (American oil driller)
driller of the first productive oil well in the United States....
Drake equation (astronomy)
equation that purports to yield the number N of technically advanced civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy as a function of other astronomical, biological, and psychological factors. Formulated in large part by the U.S. astrophysicist Frank Drake, it was first discussed in 1961 at...
Drake, Frances Ann Denny (American actress)
American actress who, with her extensive tours of the American West and her triumphs in New York City, was the leading actress on the American stage before the rise of Charlotte Cushman....
Drake, Francis Marion (American politician)
...university was founded in 1881 by the Disciples of Christ church, although the affiliation with the church has since ended. It was named for Francis Marion Drake, a former governor of Iowa and general of the American Civil War, whose financial backing helped establish the school. The......
Drake, Frank D. (American astrophysicist)
American astrophysicist Frank D. Drake devised a simple approach that illuminates the uncertainties involved in determining whether extraterrestrial intelligence is possible. The number of extant technical civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy is estimated by the following equation (the so-called Drake equation, or Green Bank formula):N =......
Drake, Jim (American sailor)
The earliest prototypes of a sailboard date back to the late 1950s. Californians Jim Drake (a sailor) and Hoyle Schweitzer (a surfer) received the first patent for a sailboard in 1968. They called their design a Windsurfer, and Schweitzer began mass-producing sailboards in the early 1970s. The sport quickly spread throughout North America,......
Drake, Joseph Rodman (American poet)
Romantic poet who contributed to the beginnings of a U.S. national literature by a few memorable lyrics before his early death....
Drake, Nicholas Rodney (English singer, songwriter, and guitarist)
English singer, songwriter, and guitarist known for emotive vocals, sombre lyrics, and rich melodies. Drake never achieved widespread recognition in his lifetime but inspired a cult following in the decades following his death....
Drake, Nick (English singer, songwriter, and guitarist)
English singer, songwriter, and guitarist known for emotive vocals, sombre lyrics, and rich melodies. Drake never achieved widespread recognition in his lifetime but inspired a cult following in the decades following his death....
Drake Passage (waterway, South America)
deep waterway, 600 miles (1,000 km) wide, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Cape Horn (the southernmost point of South America) and the South Shetland Islands, situated about 100 miles (160 km) north of the Antarctic Peninsu...

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